Seite 113 [113]
The Arab Other in Turkish Political Cartoons, 1908—1939
tionalism, hitched to the process of creating a new, “civilized” Turkish identity,
expressed itself openly and violently in the cartoons of the early republican period.
In the process of building the nation, intellectuals turned away from Ottomanism
and Islamism and began to search for ways to define and promote Turkishness
through every possible means. As cited by William Pfaff from an article published
by Michael Ignatieff, “Nationalism was: the dream that a whole nation could be
like a congregation—singing the same hymns, listening to the same gospel, sharing
the same emotions, linked not only to each other but those buried beneath their
feet” (Pfaff 1994: 12).
The process of cultural transformation as a political strategy aimed at elevating
the new state to the level of “civilized nations” included appropriation and reinven¬
tion of meanings and definitions in Turkish cultural memory and transforming
its structure. Political cartoon space was an effective component in the emerging
discourse of Turkish nationalism, especially in digging up the image of the Arab
Other buried in Turkish national memory and modifying it.
Turkish Nation and Arab Other
It was only during and after the trauma of World War I and the establishment of
the new Turkish Republic that a more complex and symbolically laden image of
the Arabs emerged in the cartoons and found a ground for the shaping of a na¬
tional memory. During the period from 1923 to 1939, Turks encountered Arabs
once again in various circumstances. For Turkey this was a time of nation building.
For most of the Arabs, it was the mandate period, where they were trying to both
define their borders and shake off colonial rule. This time, unlike during Ottoman
rule, both parties were searching for a clearer ethnic and national definition.
This series of encounters—some of them hostile, some of them more congen¬
ial—occurred simultaneously in many parts of the Middle East, including mod¬
ern-day Iraq, Syria, and Morocco. From 1916 on, the main focus of Middle East¬
ern affairs, apart from the military campaigns, was the continued dispute between
Britain and France over the interpretation of borders set by the Sykes-Picot Agree¬
ment in the participation of previous Ottoman territories. The French demanded
“greater Syria’, as promised, while the British were determined to impose their su¬
premacy in the region, especially in oil-rich Mosul, near the Turkish border. Turkey
mostly sat on the sidelines, observing the developments within its old territories of
the Middle East and north Africa, except in two cases that directly concerned Tur¬
key’s borders: Mosul and Hatay (Alexandretta). These two disputes, where Turkey
had encountered the Great Powers of Europe (the British over the Mosul question
and the French over Hatay), became instrumental for articulating in the public’s
mind Turkey’s new position as a “strong nation” within the power balance of the
new regional order. Representations of Arab images as the Other were contextual¬
ized around the grievances of the Great War and the Arabs’ struggle against the
111